


Ding Dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? THE WICKED WITCH!

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a meta about Katherine Pierce's demise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ding Dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? THE WICKED WITCH!

So, I have a LOT of feelings about everything that has happened with Katherine during the fifth season of _The Vampire Diaries_. Now that she's officially dead and gone (and according to the producers, shall remain that way; though let's be real, I don't trust those producers at all nor would I be surprised if a journey to hell to get Katherine back lay in the future), it's time to compile my thoughts and see if I can make any real sense out of them.

I totally love TVD; I'm not here to bash the writers (though this period of our main protagonist being usurped by her evil doppelganger has been hard for me, but I actually think that's why episode 5x14 "Gone Girl" worked so beautifully on every level for me). This meta will actually praise them and the choices they've made. So, if you strongly disagree, it's not that I'm disinterested in your POV, it's just that I will not argue it with you. I think what they've done this season is brave storytelling, and not just because they sent Katherine to literal hell. 

But first things first. 

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a short piece entitled [Katherine Pierce Must Die, and Here's Why](http://badboy-fangirl.livejournal.com/805666.html) which largely expounded upon my Katherine hate in relation to my Damon love. That's my natural bias, it cannot be helped. The summation of those thoughts is basically this: Katherine is the villain and the villain must die.

As with most well drawn characters, good, bad, and PURE EVIL, it's not that simple. So, let me pontificate some more.

First of all, Katherine is, for all her HBIC behavior, is a truly pathetic character. In her effort to take Stefan's *love* in any form she can, she was willing to "pretend" to be Elena for ETERNITY to acquire Stefan's love. [I have to disregard the whole Elijah factor since it seems that when he moved to NOLA, he completely forgot about Katherine, and Katherine for her part was only using him as a placeholder for the illustrious Stefan Salvatore.] I mean, look at her: She would rather live a counterfeit life than go and make a real one. It's just a sad thing. It's something that makes Katherine pitiable, and when you pity someone, when you feel compassion for them, you would never banish them to hell. Or at least, as an individual, I wouldn't.

Then you have to look at all the other things Katherine has done, but not as a way to measure her sins against everyone else's. Caroline reminds the audience in "Gone Girl" that vampires have heightened emotions and that they tend to make rash decisions, and that all of them have regrets because of the fundamental flaw they all live with.

Except, really, when have we seen Katherine make ANY rash decisions? She's a planner. After that initial getting-her-family-killed business, she has never gone into any situation without a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C, a Plan D, _you do know how the alphabet works, don't you?_

And that's where it all starts to come together for me. Remember back in S4 when Kol compelled Damon to kill Jeremy so they had to lock Damon in the cellar and Klaus came over to babysit? Klaus wanted to know how Damon got Elena to love him even though he's a dick. Klaus asked Damon what magic words he used on Elena to make her love him. Damon's sage advice: _If you're gonna be bad, be bad with purpose, otherwise you're just not worth forgiving._ Now, we all know Damon has done plenty of pointless, rash, reckless stuff, and his parting words to Katherine indicate he thinks he'll see her when he goes to his final resting place. But for all the pointless, rash, reckless stuff Damon has done, we have also seen the reasons why he did them; sometimes it was just an immature, emotional reaction to something he didn't like or couldn't handle, but often he has an "ends justifies the means" attitude that actually benefits the people he loves. He rescues them, or gets shit done, as they say, and at least I, as an audience member, understand why he did it, even if I don't agree with it. It creates sympathy.

With Katherine, there is plenty of understanding, and lots of disagreeing, at least for me. But the biggest piece to all of it, the reason that in the end, I had no sympathy for her is because she could never stop thinking about herself. Giving Elijah the Cure was as close as she ever came, and I guess since it didn't work out between them and then she promptly got the Cure shoved down her throat, any growth there was understandably lost.

EXCEPT. This one little thing is the crux of the matter for me: Elena Gilbert.

The psychology of Katherine is beautiful and complicated, ugly and simple all at once. She always puts herself first because she had to; no one was ever going to help her out, and by the time she stumbled across some people who would have done that for her, she was too used to taking care of herself to surrender control in that way. Damon and Stefan, for all their brave talk, could not protect her when it came down to it, and in fact lost their lives in the process. So Katherine's Plan B and Plan C in 1864 kept her alive. Of course, that was at the expense of two human boys and 27 vampires she called friends, one of which, Pearl, she called her "best" friend. But with no hesitation (from her own mouth) she sacrificed all of them. No problem. 

Then along came Isobel and a new doppelganger and Katherine had the first glimpse of freedom. She could give up Elena to Klaus and finally live free of shadows; of course there were many casualties along the way, like Aunt Jenna. I always use the Aunt Jenna argument when reminding people of why Klaus can never be forgiven, but it's important to remember that Katherine was just a culpable in Jenna's death. And on and on it went, right down to Jeremy dying at Silas's hand. 

And still, these things are understandable; they were means to an end, right? One could argue all the day long about collateral damage, and you could possibly get somewhere with that. But it still doesn't explain the final part for me--which isn't even after 500 years, and the realization that her daughter had been looking for her all that time, that Katherine still wanted a fake relationship with Stefan more than a real relationship with her daughter. Nope, even that, to me, is understandable, and possibly even a little supernatural. If the fated doppelganger business is true, perhaps Katherine was inexplicably compelled to always love Stefan no matter how much he didn't love her back. Perhaps she didn't have as much choice in following him around as we would like to believe? Except, we know that's not true either, because she left him easily enough in 1864 even though she knew he would wake a vampire, and she stayed away 145 years, only coming back into his life when it would serve her purposes.

But still, there is something there that makes you feel for her, right? Because she did love Stefan, at least as much as she could love anyone. 

It's what she did to Elena that makes her unforgivable for me. Not just exposing a poor, defenseless, human girl to the likes of Klaus, or killing what was left of her family after she'd already been visited by such tragedy. But stealing her body, stealing her LIFE and all the while spouting about how it is somehow Elena's fault? That Elena has the life Katherine has always wanted, and so she's just gonna take it? That's one of the big ten, you know. The Ten Commandments--the tenth one, in fact: Do Not Covet. But Katherine coveted, and managed to steal just what she coveted. Katherine destroyed Elena's relationship with the man she loves and fucked with the head of another man that Elena still loves. She would have happily gone on this way, for eternity, a hijacker of the mind, body, and soul, and she would never have regretted a moment of it. 

And then the jig was up--she was caught, and like any criminal who is abysmally sorry to be _caught_ , but never regretful of the action itself, she was forced to give herself up. She finally had to die. She knew it. There was no escape. So she made her peace with it--and with one more vengeful act, she sealed her fate. She poisoned the body she'd taken up residence in so that when its rightful owner came back, her life, already in shambles, would be even more irreparable than before.

Something I read in an episode recap summed it up perfectly: you may not have LIKED her, but everybody LOVED Katherine. And it's true. How can you not love a character that is so unapologetically irredeemable? Yet there were forever glimpses--split seconds, if you will--where I thought I might relate to her on some level. I've been thinking about it all day, and really I just applaud the writers for NEVER redeeming her. She had her moments, and she had actual opportunity where she could have turned things around for herself, but she never did. She never chose the harder road for herself, and as writers, that must have been the hardest decision they ever made: NOT redeeming Katherine, who had so much viable psychology to find the softer side. Even in "500 Years of Solitude" we got to see both sides: Damon laughing at her pain, reminding her that it was her own fault her family died while Stefan tried to erase the hurt for her, take away what had happened that basically made her unwilling (or unable?) to ever really love someone, even when they gave her their love unconditionally. The writers chose to NOT let her die, cross over, and just have peace. Instead her last act on this earth was full of vengeance against a girl who, let's face it, never did anything to Katherine unless she was forced into it. Elena did nothing except wear Katherine's face, but nothing could awaken Katherine's own sense of sympathy. 

And that's what I can't forgive Katherine for; even though initially for me it was all about Damon, in the end it's all about Elena. Because Elena was the innocent entity in all of this, the one whose power was taken from her, whose own retribution was only when it was her last alternative. Elena, who deserved none of the bad that has and will come to her because of Katherine Pierce; who is the main protagonist of this show; and who had to disappear entirely from the narrative for me to finally get just how diabolical and irredeemable Katherine Pierce is.

The point is Katherine is gone. Gone Girl Gone, for good, forever, and for always (hopefully). And Klaus didn't get the pleasure of killing her. That honor went to Stefan, an irony in and of itself, that I wrap up in a metaphorical hug. I want to hug it and squeeze it and call it George because it makes me so happy.

Katherine was a perfect villain; she was multifaceted and exasperating; she was beautiful and ugly and awful and wonderful. I will miss her; but I'm also FUCKING ECSTATIC that she's gone. It was time.

  
[](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/TVD/Katerina_zpsaba74e63.png.html) [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/TVD/katherine-pierce_zps9c4e5f41.jpg.html) [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/TVD/KatStef.jpg.html) [](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/TVD/Katmasquerade.jpg.html) [ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/americanoutlaw/media/TVD/Kat_zpsbd4d9e32.png.html)  



End file.
